


A Long Road

by RandomWordsAndStormyDays



Category: Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, No Beta We Post Like The Sleep Deprived Writers We Are
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-08
Updated: 2020-10-08
Packaged: 2021-03-07 18:33:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,199
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26892223
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RandomWordsAndStormyDays/pseuds/RandomWordsAndStormyDays
Summary: Riley Smith lost everything to a bullet, but she’s willing to throw away whatever she has left to find the man who shot her and put him in a shallow grave, just like he did to her.However, her run of 18 karat bad luck isn’t over yet, and she’s still got a long road ahead of her to find the revenge she’s looking for.“You can’t go back and change the beginning, but you can start where you are and change the ending.” - C.S. Lewis
Relationships: Benny & Female Courier, Craig Boone/Female Courier
Comments: 2
Kudos: 8





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I intend for this to be my magnum opus for Fallout: New Vegas. There will not be regular updates, as I have recently lost most of my motivation for writing. However, I do intend to continue writing and updating this as I complete it. Fun fact: the last chapter is done... I just need to get there.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A glimpse into the past before the present is ripped away, denied with a bullet. Who was Riley, and who was she supposed to be before a bang took her future from her?

_ “I don't remember much of what happened but when I think of it the sharp pain and anger clings to me and nothing more.” -Unknown _

_ - _

Her hands are bound.

The ground is hard and cold.

Someone is digging near her feet.

These realizations trickle in slowly, like a sink with a leak that never stops dripping. Each new observation is a piece of a puzzle she’s desperately trying to assemble before the end. But the end of what?

She doesn’t fully remember how she got into this situation. One minute she was on the road, bright lights of the New Vegas Strip filling her vision, only a few steps away from completing her delivery. The next moment she’s being dragged on the ground by her ankles, head thumping against the Mojave dirt with every step the man tugging her along takes. There’s at least three other people leading the way, and a man behind her. A particularly rough bump and she groans at the pain and the whole party stops.

From somewhere up ahead a voice calls “knock her out again, ‘fore she can call for help,” and then a fist comes down to meet her face and everything goes black.

When they knocked her out the first time the sun had been setting, tinting the sky with purples and reds. On the road she could just make out the faintest sliver of light on the horizon. Now, the moon is high in the sky, bright and full. The sight of it makes her head hurt and she knows she’s got a concussion.

The brim of her hat hides her eyes from view and she takes in what she can. The sound of someone digging, the smell of cigarettes, and three pairs of shoes - two dirty and dusty from the road and wear, and one pair that looks nice, almost new by post-war standards. Then, people start talking.

“You got what you were after, so pay up.” The voice is rough, angry sounding.

The response is casual, like whoever says it isn’t afraid of the people around him, even though he’s clearly not one of them. “You’re cryin’ in the rain, pally.”

So this was a job, taking her out, not just a couple guys looking for an easy score. But what did the person who hired them want?

Her? She’s a nobody, just a courier who’s good at her job.

Her delivery? It’s possible, but if that was the case why not just leave her in the dirt outside the Strip, why drag her to wherever they are now?

A realization strikes her: they mean to kill her, bury her out here so no one knows where she is. So that her body can’t be stumbled upon. Something about this whole thing is off, what’s so important about her that her body can’t even be found?

Her mind flashes to Andrew. They’ve been together nearly a year. When she doesn’t come home he might come looking for her, and if he does, he’ll never find her.

Or will he think she left him and not even bother to try and track her down? It wouldn’t surprise her. She’s always been a little flighty, hard to nail to one spot. The only reason she didn’t bounce out of her relationship is that Andy never tried to keep her tied down. Never complained that her job kept her on the road five days a week, only held her a little tighter every time she stumbled through the door, road worn and dusty. He probably won’t even look for her, they love each other, sure- but he’s not a traveler, not a fighter, not an adventurer. She’s positive he’ll miss her, he loves her after all, but she also wonders how long it’ll take him to move on once he realizes she’s never coming back.

Her heart hurts when she thinks of his face. Will he cry? Or has he been waiting this whole time for her to finally leave?

Will he find her mother and brother? Track them down to tell her that she’s missing, that she’s probably dead? Or will the two of them go on forever, watching the door and waiting for her to stop by? And what of her friends? Gunny and Jack, Missy and Elliot, they’ll miss her for sure. Will Andrew find them and tell them that she’ll never show for a monthly poker game again? Will they cry, will she be mourned, or will she fade from their lives as easily as she stepped into them?

Maybe she can make it so no one has to miss her. She still doesn’t know why they dragged out putting her in the ground, but she’s certainly not going to just roll over and let them get away with it. And if she can get free, then no one has to worry for her. Quickly she sits up, grinding her wrists together to try and get the rope around them to loosen up.

“Heh, guess who’s waking up over here?”

It doesn’t work, the knots are good, tight and rough, so she goes to run. Just as she’s rising up a hand clamps down on her shoulder and keeps her kneeling. When she looks up there’s three men right in front of her. Two great Khans and a man in a checkered suit. It’s clear by his relaxed position that he’s in charge and she watches, annoyed, as he puffs on a cigarette. She’s about to die, and he’s getting a nicotine fix?

Then he flicks it aside, crushing it under one nearly pristine shoe. “Time to cash out.” Oh, god, casino talk.

“Will you get it over with?” The Khan on the left looks annoyed, but checkered suit holds up a finger to silence him.

“Maybe Khans kill people without lookin’ ‘em in the face, but I ain’t a Fink. You dig?” Well, shit, that confirms what she already knew: they mean to kill her. It also tells her that this man isn’t a Khan, not that that wasn’t blindingly obvious by the everything about him, but still- it means whoever she pissed off probably isn’t with them either.

He pulls out a poker chip, it’s shiny, definitely different than any one she’s ever seen before. It has to be the platinum chip that was in her package, the one she was supposed to deliver. At least now she knows it was about her job, nothing personal.

“You’ve made your last delivery, kid. Sorry you got twisted up in this scene.” What scene? There was nothing to get twisted up in. She’s just a courier, doesn’t owe anyone money, never ran with a group that made enemies, has never even been on the Strip before. It’s all about who hired her, they’re the ones that should be tied up, kneeling in the dirt. She’s a good person, has friends and family that care about her, there’s no reason for her to be here, on her knees, not even given the chance to say goodbye.

He pulls out a pistol. She knows she should be scared, but the emotion seems far away. All she can get her hands around is annoyance and confusion. 

“From where you’re kneeling must seem like an 18 karat run of bad luck.” God who is this guy? All the poker puns and shit? They live in New Vegas, but doesn’t he have any sort of original thought- or has he really bought into all the hype? He aims the gun at her face, and when she looks up at him, she sees it in his eyes that he’s serious, there’s something there she reads that tells her nothing she can say or do will change her fate.

She’s going to die.

“Truth is, the game was rigged from the start.”

Her last thought is: what an asshole.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Names, faces, places. Goodsprings, Sunny Smiles, a man she doesn't know. Memories are a funny thing, and Riley is learning fast that she doesn't really know anything.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Got chapter 2 done a lot quicker than expected. Here's hoping y'all like it.

_ “We’re all killers, we’ve all killed parts of ourselves, to survive, we’ve all got blood on our hands, something somewhere had to die, so we could stay alive.” -m.a.w _

-

Flashes of colors, the taste of dirt in her mouth, a distorted voice in her ear. Then nothing.

Bright light in her eyes, a hand on her shoulder, the jingling of a machine. Then nothing.

Dust across her face, stares from strangers in a foreign uniform, the recoil of a gun. Then nothing.

The memories drip away like water through her fingers, bring frustration and desperation, but with the missing moments also comes the knowledge that she’s not dead.

Being alive when she was certain of her death should be a great thing. And it is, except for the part where Riley is having trouble with her memory. Trying to remember what happened before the man’s gun went off in her face is impossible. Every attempt makes her head hurt, makes her ears ring, makes her hands shake. Recalling things that happened afterwards isn’t impossible, but none of it is solid.

She knows she spends time in Goodsprings, but what she did while there is foggy. Images of faces and actions she took blend together, thick and hazy in her mind. Sometimes memories will flash, unprompted: a red headed girl with a dog, smiling at her as she relearns how to shoot, a man, scared and alone, begging her for help from the people coming to kill him, collecting a bundle of flowers resting upon a grave that she knows should have been hers.

She knows a doctor there saved her after a robot pulled her from the ground, but at first the only reason she knows this is the letter he gave her full of instructions for how to stay alive. Only knows that the pip boy on her arm is from him because she doesn’t know how to change the greeting on the start up screen from his wife’s name. She knows that he told her the headaches she experienced may never go away, and that her only reprieve will be stimpacks and med-x.

She knows that her name is Riley, and that she discovered this because of a tag sewn onto her bag. And she knows that she’s a courier, because of the letters found on her body when the people of Goodsprings went searching for information on the poor girl who was buried half alive in their isolated town.

She knows she needs to go to The Strip, that the people that have helped her so far truly believe that’s where the man in the checkered suit who shot her will be. She knows that the journey will not be quick or easy, but that she has to go.

She knows all these things, but what she doesn’t know are the inbetweens. Which is to say, all the little moments in between these things and her actions that make up who she is. The little interactions that might give her a glimpse into the kind of person she is. Is she nice and helpful, or cruel and unforgiving? Does she try and see the best in other people, or does she keep them at distance for fear of getting hurt?

Not knowing the decisions she’s made since waking, or even the names of the people who saved her life is frustrating.

There are a few hints to who she was, things left on her person and in her bag that her would be killers didn’t think were important enough or valuable enough to take. There’s a well worn rifle with a perfectly sighted scope, initials that don’t match her name engraved into the side: S. S. S. She doesn’t know who that is, but she does know that their rifle is really good. There’s also the courier letters that Doc Mitchell returned to her, but they don’t tell her much. A few flowers that Sunny tells her are good for making medicine. A couple caps, just enough to jingle in her bag, but not enough to even buy her a meal. A deck of cards. A pack of cigarettes that she doesn’t feel the urge to smoke, a spare set of clothes, and two boxes of .308 ammo.

The everyday items aren’t enough to tell her who she is, and while she finds some comfort in having her things, she wishes there was something more personal in the bag. Even if it only leaves her with more questions and no answers. For now, this pack could be anyone’s, there’s no individuality and it leaves Riley grasping for any hint to who she used to be.

So she knows some things, but she doesn’t really remember Goodsprings. Can’t recollect the time from before the grave all the way up through her leaving. The same goes for Primm, although a few more memories than before solidify into things she can recall at will, instead of being bombarded with them anytime her brain stops racing and her heart calms.

It’s there, in the Mojave Express building, that she finds a notebook, mostly empty and fully intact. Her last night in Primm she writes in it, and when she makes the trip back to Goodsprings, for trade and safety, she continues to write in it.

It starts with a list of everything she knows about herself, it’s short but important. Then she writes names of the people she’s met, and everything she can remember about them from her scattered recollection. She transfers the list of ingredients that Sunny left her onto one of the pages, fills another page with nonsense words and quotes that she knows she’s heard before, but couldn’t explain to a soul from where.

At first she tries to write down her past, she reaches for something, anything in her mind that will tell her who she used to be. The harder she tries to remember, the worse it hurts, the more she shakes, the further and further the answers drift from her. More than once she wakes to a pounding in her head, tears on her cheeks, and a throat raw from screaming. 

Even still, her journal becomes her confidant and her sanity. Every night she writes as much as she can remember about the day. Hopes that it doesn’t have to become her lifeline, that she never needs it to remember, but writes in it all the same.

In the mornings she writes her dreams, hopes that one day they’ll turn out to be memories. When she relives the shooting, she doesn’t write at all.

Once a day she visits Doc Mitchell, she works for him every morning in exchange for a stimpack and every evening she hunts geckos with Sunny. It’s a good routine, and for a week and a half it’s perfect. But she knows it’s not enough, that eventually she’s going to have to leave here, find the man that tried to kill her, yet she stalls.

Every morning she wakes and tells herself that today is the day she leaves Goodsprings and makes the trip to The Strip, but everyday she finds another excuse: her headache is too bad, she doesn’t have enough supplies, she promised Trudy she’d take another look at her radio, every day something new until finally, Sunny asks her a question that she’s forced to answer.

“What are you afraid of?”

Riley pauses, can of water halfway to her mouth. She pulls it away from her face to look at Smiles, “what are you talking about?”

The look on the other girl’s face is sad. “You came back after Primm, and that wasn’t too weird, you needed to trade and regroup with all the new information you learned.” Sunny shrugs. “But then you stayed, and no one is really sure why. When you woke up you seemed so determined, so motivated to find out what exactly happened, so clearly something changed. I’m guessing that you’re scared.”

For some reason, shame bleeds into Riley and she looks away. Sunny isn’t wrong, lots of things have happened between her waking up and right now, but none of it has changed her motivation. All it’s changed is her perspective.

The wasteland isn’t safe, her short trip to Primm proved that, and it’s especially not safe if you’re alone. The Strip isn’t close, it’s a few weeks journey if she takes her time and doesn’t run herself ragged everyday, and a lot can happen on a trip that long. She’s already faced death once, and there’s no way she makes the journey completely unharmed, but it defeats her purpose if she dies of exposure or a stray bullet before she can even make it to the gates.

Still, she’s alone in this world, there’s no one she can truly rely on to help her. She wants to ask Sunny to come with her, but overall the girl is still a stranger. A friendly one, who helped her when she needed it the most, but a stranger all the same. It wouldn’t be fair to ask her to leave her home, everyone she knows, to come with her on a quest for revenge. It wouldn’t be right to ask her to put herself in danger for a girl she hardly knows.

Of course she’s scared of not making it to her intended destination.

But it goes beyond that.

She’s also scared of learning the truth.

Everyone in Goodsprings has given her the benefit of the doubt, especially after she banded them together and helped protect the town. But there’s not a person here who knows why those men tried to kill her. They treat her like a victim, but who’s to say she didn’t deserve what they did to her?

Maybe she’s a murderer. Maybe she’s a thief. Maybe she’s just as bad as the Powergangers or Fiends. No one knows, least of all her. So, yeah, she’s terrified that someone is going to tell her that she’s a monster, that she deserves everything she got and more.

And then there’s the thought that maybe she’s none of those things. That maybe she’s no one. There’s the possibility that there isn’t a single person out there that’s noticed that she’s gone, who cares that she’s dead. What if she has no family, no friends? Or worse- what if she does and she never finds them, just spends the rest of her life alone and confused, drowning in false memories and questions?

What if she was just collateral and her death, or near death, really meant nothing to anyone?

But she can’t tell Sunny that, after all, they’re not even friends.

“You’re right. I’m being a coward, I’m not going to find any answers here.” Riley smiles at Sunny and then hops off the rock they were sitting on to watch the geckos. “Why don’t we take care of these hissing assholes and call it a day?”

Sunny smiles back at her, a little reserved, maybe a little concerned, but she doesn’t push, just shuffles off the rock and onto the sand. “Sounds like a plan.”

The next morning, just before the sun can peek over the horizon, Riley leaves Goodsprings, determined not to return. At least not until she’s gotten some answers, or maybe some revenge.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! Kudos and comments are fuel for the motivation and word count machine. Please leave your donations of these things in the boxes below. If you like where this is going, tell me!

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!  
> Please let me know what y’all thought with a kudo and a comment. Even a few words means the most. Feel free to come to talk to me at my [Tumblr](https://randomwordsandstormydays.tumblr.com/), and check out my other fics on my Works page.


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